WASHINGTON — In a ruling sure to have major repercussions for service industry consumers, the Supreme Court ruled that hairdressers are not obligated to refund money to unhappy customers unless they specifically offer a binding money-back guarantee.

In The Case of The High School Hairdo from Hell, the court determined by a 7-2 margin that Decatur, Ga., hairstylist Vonda LaRubidoux was not financially responsible for an ugly haircut she gave to Lavernia Thomason three days before Thomason's 10-year high school reunion in 1998. Thomason had filed suit against the hairstylist, claiming emotional distress and asking for $70 remuneration plus court costs.

But writing for the majority, Chief Judge Judy Sheindlin ruled that one bad haircut did not entitle Thomason to a refund. "No one is disputing that the haircut wasn't bad," Sheindlin wrote. "It's awful. But that's the risk you take whenever you ask someone to cut your hair, whether it's at Hair by Vonda or at your local barber college."

Judge Edward Koch concurred, in a separate opinion for the court. "If I got money back every time I got a bad haircut, I wouldn't need this gig, I can tell you that," Koch wrote.

Judges Joe Brown and Mills Lane dissented, arguing that LaRubidoux bore some culpability for "making the plaintiff's hair look like a carton of Jiffy-Pop popcorn." "Clearly, the plaintiff's hair did not appear that way magically overnight," Brown wrote in his dissenting opinion.

But for the Sheinldin-led majority, the case turned on a receipt from LaRubidoux's parlor that read "All Sales Are Final." "If the plaintiff couldn't live by the terms of that arrangement, she should have taken her business elsewhere," Sheindlin wrote.

In another case seen as bolstering the protection of business owners against litigious customers, the court ruled 8-1, with Judge Hatchett dissenting, that a Pawnee City, Nebraska pet-store owner was not at fault for promising to keep a cocker spaniel for one potential customer but then selling the dog to another before the first patron could return to the store with the money to complete the sale. The court's ruling in The Case of the Dog-gone Doggie overturns the precedent-setting Case of the Pilfered Pooch, which conservative critics have often cited as an example of judicial over-reaching.

Still, some court observers have taken aim at the Sheindlin court, contending that it has little respect for precedent. Within the past year alone, the court has rolled back many landmark decisions from the Wapner Court, including The Case of the Rowdy Renter and The Case of the Tardy Tax Preparer.

"These latest decisions are just another nail in the coffin for what Joseph Wapner stood for," said Doug Llewellyn, a long-time court watcher. "Everything, from the right of jilted fiancees to reclaim their engagement rings to protections against boisterous neighbors seems to be under attack."

But Harry T. Stone, a retired federal judge and now dean of the Reinhold Law School at the University of California-Sunnydale, contends that the Sheindlin court is correctly interpreting the law as it sees fit. "It goes back to Marbury v. Madison," Stone said. "That was the case which established that if you have a problem, don't take the law into your own hands; you take them to court."

The cases are High School Hairdo from Hell (20-304) and Pilfered Pooch (20-309).